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MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 

































































































































































































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Frontispiece — Miss Toosey's Mission. 

‘“WHAT A CURIOUS BOOK YOU HAVE HERE.’” 


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••• /LU/fTRATED ••• 

PHILADELPHIA . 


[ flENRYALTEMVS COMPANY 




1 HE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

T*o Received 

OCT 20 1903 

Oww/BIOUT PHWf 

CtuKi. 1&-H] o 3 
CLASS Ct' XXc- No. 

COSY B. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


LADDIE 


50 Cents 


Copyright, 1903, by Henry Altemus 


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CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I. 

Sundays in Martel . 

II. 

“Come Over and Help Us” 

III. 

“From Afric’s Coral Strand 

IV. 

“God Gives the Increase” . 

V. 

“Friend, Come Up Higher” 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


‘ ‘ What a curious book you have here ’ ” Frontispiece. 
‘Miss Toosey’s little house in North Street” . . 15 

‘Miss Toosey looked out the text” .... 23 

‘Slipped a sovereign out of his waistcoat pocket” . 41 
‘With a card held in the corner of her apron” . 53 

‘The rector was seized with an attack of coughing” . 77 

‘Mabel pats it with her woolly gloves” ... 87 

‘She was sitting in the arm-chair by the fire” . . 103 

‘He held the missionary box thoughtfully” . . 113 

(ix) 


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1 


SUNDAYS IN MARTEL 


XI 



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MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


CHAPTER I 

SUNDAYS IN MARTEL 

M ISS TOOSEY always wore a black silk 
dress on Sunday, and went three times 
to church. Morning, afternoon, and 
evening, as soon as the bell changed at the 
quarter, that black silk dress came out of Miss 
Toosey ’s little house in North Street, turned 
the corner into High Street, crossed the Market- 
place, passed under the archway into the 
churchyard, in at the west door, and up the 
middle aisle, past the free seats, which occupy 
the lower end of Martel church, and stopped 
at the second pew on the left-hand side, one 
sitting in which has been rented by Miss Toosey 
for many years. This pew is immediately in 

13 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


front of the church-wardens’ seat, where those 
two dignitaries sit majestically, with a long rod 
placed conveniently on either hand ready to be 
seized at a moment’s notice, to execute judg- 
ment on youthful offenders in the free seats, 
though the well-known fact that generations of 
paint and varnish have made them fixtures 
somewhat takes off from the respect and awe 
felt for them. 

Miss Toosey is short, and the pew-door has 
a tendency to stick ; and when you have a Bible, 
prayer-book, hymn-book, spectacle-case, and 
umbrella in your hands, you cannot enter into 
a struggle on equal terms; and so when Mr. 
Churchwarden Wyatt happens to be in church 
in time, he leans over and opens the pew-door 
for Miss Toosey, 4 4 and very kind of him, too, 
a most gentlemanly man Mr. Wyatt is, my 
dear. ’ ’ 

The black silk was quite a part of Sunday in 
Miss Toosey ’s mind, and therefore holy, to a 
certain extent. She would have considered it 
disrespectful to the day to put on any other 
dress, and no stress of weather could prevent 
14 



f Gforpt fftittr 0 ri It. 

Miss Toosey's Mission. 

“MISS TOOSEY’S LITTLE HOUSE IN NORTH STREET.” 


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MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


her wearing it ; indeed, she thought it 
decidedly a want of trust in Providence to 
fear the heavy rain or deep snow might 
injure it. 

She would pin up the skirt inside out round 
her waist with a reckless disregard of appear- 
ance, so that you could hardly guess she had any 
dress on at all under her shawl; but nothing 
would have induced her to put on another. Of 
late years, too, she had not felt it quite right to 
wear it on week-days, when she was asked out to 
tea ; it seemed to her inappropriate, like reading 
a regular Sunday hook on week-days, which 
has something profane about it. It had been 
through many vicissitudes; not even Miss 
Toosey herself could accurately recall what it 
was in its original form; and the first distinct 
incident in its existence was the black crape 
with which it was trimmed, in respect to the 
memory of Miss Toosey ’s father— old Toosey, 
the parish doctor. This was fifteen years ago ; 
and since then it had been unpicked and re-made 
several times, turned, sponged, dipped, French- 
chalked, cleaned, trimmed, and altered, till it 
17 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


would have required vast ingenuity to do any- 
thing fresh to it. 

As the black silk was part of Sunday to Miss 
Toosey, so was Miss Toosey part of Sunday to 
many of the Martel people. The Misses Purts, 
the draper’s daughters, in the Market-place, 
knew that it was time to put on their smart 
bonnets (the latest Paris fashion) when they 
saw Miss Toosey pass the window, so as to in- 
sure their clattering into church on their high 
heels, tossing and giggling, not later than the 
Venite. 

Old Budd, the clerk, with his white beard and 
wooden leg, always said, “Good-morning, Miss 
Toosey; fine day, mum,” as he stumped past 
her pew-door on his way to the vestry, which 
made her feel rather uncomfortable as he said 
it out loud, and it did not seem quite right ; but 
then Mr. Budd is such a good man, and being 
a church official, no doubt he has a right to 
behave just as he pleases. Even Mr. Dodson, 
the late curate, after baptizing fifteen pugna- 
cious babies, all crying lustily, said, as he passed 
Miss Toosey on his way back to the reading- 
18 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


desk, wiping the beads of perspiration from his 
good-natured red face, “Warm work, Miss 
Toosey.” 

I think that both Mr. Peters, the rector, and 
Mr. Glover, the curate, would have quite lost 
their place in the service if Miss Toosey’s seat 
had been empty, as they neither of them could 
have preached with comfort without the fat, 
red-velvet cushion with the tassels on which 
they laid their books. 

I do not think it ever occurred to Miss Toosey 
that there was anything amiss in Martel church 
or its services. She was proud of the fine, old 
gray stone tower, which had been built when 
men gave willingly of their best for the service 
of God, and so built “for glory and for 
beauty”; and she loved the roof of the nave, 
which was rich in oak carving, bleached white 
by time, with angels and emblems of wonderful 
variety and ingenuity. And all the rest of the 
church she took for granted, and did not 
wonder at the narrow, uncomfortable pews, 
where, as Mr. Malone, the Irish curate, said, 
“It was quite impossible to kneel down, and 

2 — Miss Toosey' s Mission. I q 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


very difficult to get up again”; or at the free 
seats, put behind all the others ; or at the large, 
steep galleries ; or at the high pulpit, rich in red 
velvet and dusty fringe on one side, and the 
reading-desk to match on the other, with the 
clerk’s desk underneath, where Mr. Budd did 
his part of the service, i. e. y the responses, as 
a clerk should do, in a strident, penetrating 
voice, and took a well-earned nap in the sermon 
when his duties were discharged. 

It did not strike her as curious that the seats 
in the chancel should be occupied by the Peters 
family on one side and by the Rossiters on the 
other, while the ladies and gentlemen of the 
choir displayed their smart bonnets or Sunday 
waistcoats to great advantage in front of the 
organ, where, in return for their vocal exer- 
tions, they were privileged to behave as badly 
as their fancies led them. You see, Miss Toosey 
was not critical, and she had not been to any 
other church for many years, and custom draws 
a soft curtain over imperfections, and reverence 
is not quick to see irreverence in others, and 
prayer fills the air with clouds of incense 


20 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


through which we cannot easily see bonnets, 
but only heaven itself; and as Miss Toosey 
knelt, being very short, you remember, and 
the pews high, she could only with her outward 
eyes see the angels in the roof and her prayer- 
book. 

And it was just the same with the sermons: 
as church was church to Miss Toosey, so a 
sermon was a sermon. Whether it was Mr. 
Peters, Mr. Glover, or Mr. Malone, Miss Toosey 
looked out the text in her little brown Bible, 
and put the bookmarker, with “Love the Jews,” 
into the place, and gave her head a little nod, 
as if to show that the text was there, and no 
mistake about it; and then took oft her spec- 
tacles, wiped them, put them into a case, gave 
her black silk skirt a slight shake to prevent 
creases, and then settled down to listen. 

I will not undertake to say that Miss Toosey 
entered into all the subleties of doctrine set 
forth over the red- velvet cushion; I will not 
even deny that sometimes the lavender ribbons 
on Miss Toosey ’s bonnet nodded, without much 
connection with the arguments of the discourse, 


21 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


and that the words “election and grace’ ’ grew 
faint and dreamy in her ears, and Mr. Peters’s 
gray hair or Mr. Glover’s whiskers disappeared 
from her sight. I am disposed to think that she 
did not lose very much; but Miss Toosey took 
it much to heart, so much so that she could 
hardly believe herself capable of it, and even 
contended that she was listening all the time, 
though she closed her eyes to pay greater atten- 
tion. 

But sometimes the sermons kept Miss Toosey 
awake effectually, and made her feel very un- 
comfortable for some days afterwards ; and 
this was when they were on the subject of 
conversion. Mr. Malone was especially strong 
on this point; and, after one of his powerful 
discourses, Miss Toosey would have a wakeful 
night, going through the course of her peaceful, 
uneventful life, trying to find that moment of 
awakening which other Christians seemed to 
find so easily, wondering if she might date her 
conversion from a day when she was a little 
child, crying and being comforted at her 
mother’s knee; or in the quiet, sober joy of her 


22 



Gtorjrr /?r/te. r /3 n /i 

Miss Toosey's Mission 


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MISS TOOSEY LOOKED OUT THE TEXT. * * 

23 






MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


Confirmation ; or when she followed her mother 
np the aisle, one Easter Day, in trembling 
awe to her first Communion; or in the days of 
her simple, girlish romance long ago, when her 
heart was overflowing with pure happiness; or 
to the days following so quickly when it came 
to an untimely end, and she sobbed herself to 
sleep, night after night, with her cheek (it was 
round and smooth then) pressed to that same 
little brown Bible, with some faded flowers be- 
tween the leaves; or could it have been when 
her father died and she stood alone by his 
grave ? 

None of these events seemed quite to answer 
to Mr. Malone’s descriptions, and sometimes 
Miss Toosey was driven to fear that she must 
rank herself with the unconverted, to whom 
a few scathing words were addressed at the 
conclusion of the sermon. 

On one occasion there was a revival at Martel, 
and meetings were held at the schoolroom, one 
of which Miss Toosey attended. There was 
much heat and hymn-singing and excitement; 
and Miss Toosey was agitated and hysterical 

25 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


and impressed; but when the presiding clergy- 
man, in an impassioned manner, invited all 
those who were conscious of conversion to re- 
main and the rest to leave, Miss Toosey, with- 
out a moment’s hesitation, went out and found 
her way home, sobbing and broken-hearted. 

Then, too, the doctrine of assurance troubled 
her sorely, feeling, as she did, sure only of her 
own weakness and God’s great mercy. And so 
she grew very nervous and uncomfortable when 
people began to talk of their religious experi- 
ences, which seemed so much more satisfactory 
than her own. 

You must not, however, suppose that Miss 
Toosey was at all High Church; on the con- 
trary, she had a horror of Puseyites and of the 
opinions which she fondly imagined them to 
hold ; such, for example, as works being the only 
means of salvation, without the faintest mix- 
ture of faith, which, as Miss Toosey said, is so 
directly opposite to the teaching of the Bible. 
She also spoke of the danger of the “multiplica- 
tion of ordinances,” a well-sounding sentence 
which Mr. Glover was rather fond of ; and Miss 
26 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


Toosey always gave a little triumphant sniff 
after saying it, for it is not every one who can 
make use of abstruse theological expressions of 
many syllables. 

It is true that she went to church herself when- 
ever there was an opportunity, and would have 
done so if Mr. Peters had largely increased the 
services, but that, of course, was different. 
She also regarded with suspicion the efforts of 
some of the young ladies of the parish, who had 
“high” tendencies, to introduce crosses surrep- 
titiously into the decorations at Christmas, cun- 
ningly disguised with evergreens, and of odd 
and ornamental shapes. She was firmly per- 
suaded that the emblem of our faith had some- 
thing Romish about it, and that it was safer to 
keep to circles and anchors and triangles; in- 
deed, she distrusted the decoration excitement 
among the young ladies altogether, and looked 
back with regret to the days when the pew- 
opener used to put sprigs of holly in the win- 
dows, and fasten bushes of the samp to the 
lamps in the chancel. 


27 



COME OVER AND HELP US ” 




CHAPTER II 


“come oveb and help us” 

N OW I must tell you about Miss Toosev’s 
Mission, and I think it will surprise 
you to hear that her Mission was 
the conversion of the heathen,— not the heathen 
at Martel, though there were enough and to 
spare, even in that favored spot ; nor the 
heathen in London, or our great towns even; 
but the heathen in foreign parts, real bona fide 
black heathen, with war paint and feathers, and 
strings of beads, and all the rest of it. Her 
Mission began in this manner: A missionary 
Bishop came to preach at Martel. I do not 
know quite how it happened, as he certainly did 
not pronounce “Shibboleth” with the same dis- 
tinct and unctious intonation which was deemed 
essential at Martel; but I have been told that 
he met Mr. Peters out at dinner, and that the 
rector, always good-natured, offered his pulpit, 
3i 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


red-velvet cushion and all, for the Bishop’s use 
on the following Sunday evening. 

The Bishop gladly accepted the offer, hie 
was not quick to see microscopic differences of 
opinion; the cut of a coat, a posture, or the use 
of a cant word did not seem to him of such vital 
importance as he found attached to them among 
Churchmen at home ; and he was fairly puzzled 
at the hot blood and animosity that arose from 
them, bidding fair even at times to rend the 
woven garment without seam. 

He had been used to a clearer, simpler atmos- 
phere, a larger horizon, a wider span of heaven 
overhead than we can get in our streets and 
lanes, making it easier, perhaps, to look up 
steadfastly, as those should whose lives are ever 
teaching them how far, how terribly “far the 
heaven is from the earth,” where the earth lies 
in darkness and idolatry. To one who was used 
to the difference between Christian and heathen, 
the difference between Churchman and Church- 
man seemed unutterably small; so that he was 
•fain to say with Abraham, “Let there be no 
strife between us, I pray, for we are brethren. ’ ’ 
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MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


He had come home with his heart burning 
within him with the urgency of the work he left 
behind, confident that he could not fail to find 
help and sympathy in happy, rich, Christian 
England. In his waking thoughts, as well as 
in his dreams, there always stood by him a man 
of Macedonia, the Macedonia of his far-off 
labors, saying, “Come over and help us”; and 
he found that the love of many had waxed cold, 
and that indifference and scarcely concealed 
weariness received him wherever he went. 

So he was glad to accept Mr. Peters’s invita- 
tion, and thought Mr. Malone looked rather 
sourly at him in the vestry, and even the rector 
was not quite so cordial to him as he had been 
at the dinner-party, still he scaled the heights 
of the pulpit with alacrity, to the enlivening 
strain of “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains,” 
which not even the “Mitre Hymn-book” and 
the Martel choir can rob of its charms. 

The text which Miss Toosey found out in her 
little brown Bible was from St. John, the sixth 
chapter and ninth verse: “There is a lad here 
with five barley loaves and two small fishes; 

33 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


but what are they among so many?” The 
Bishop began by describing the scene where the 
miracle occurred,— the barren hillside; the blue 
sea of Galilee; the towns in the distance, with 
their white, flat-roofed houses, nestling in the 
green valley like “a handful of pearls in a 
goblet of emerald”; the sun setting behind the 
purple Galileean hills, and the soft evening light 
touching the mountain tops with gold, and cast- 
ing long shadows on the quiet sea, where the 
fisliing-boats were going forth to their nightly 
work. And then he told of the weary, foot-sore 
crowd, gathered on the slope of the hill, far 
from home, and hungry and fainting,— women 
and little children, as well as men,— many of 
whom had come from far-away Capernaum or 
Caesarea, skirting the north side of the lake for 
many a weary mile, on foot, to meet the ship 
that bore our Lord across the sea. 

Whence can they buy bread in this wilder- 
ness? But among that hapless crowd there is 
One, foot-sore and weary and fasting like them, 
yet Who is the Creator Himself. “He Who 
maketli the grass to grow upon the mountains, 
34 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


and herb for the use of man/’ Who “feedeth 
the young ravens,' ’ and Who “filleth the hungry 
‘soul with good things 9 1 ; and He is looking with 
infinite compassion on their want ; and He says 
to His disciples, 4 'Give ye them to eat." 

And then, abruptly, the Bishop turned from 
the story of the miracle to his own work, and 
he told of the great extent of mountain, forest, 
and plain, of the mighty rivers, of the rich and 
fertile land, and the luxuriant beauty all around, 
fair as the promised land of which Moses said, 
‘ ‘ The eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon 
it, from the beginning of the year even unto the 
end of the year." 

But the people of this fair land are, like the 
weary crowd on the hillside, far from home — 
ah! how far from heaven, with the deep, deep 
sea of ignorance rolling between ; they are 
hungry, sinking for the want of the Bread of 
Life; but civilization and knowledge and light 
are far away from them across the ocean, and 
"how can we satisfy these men with bread here 
in the wilderness!" It is evening, too; surely 
the sun of this world is getting near its setting, 

3 — Miss Toosey's Mission. 3 5 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


and casting long shadows, if we would but see 
them. Shall we send these poor souls away 
fasting! — these women and little children? 
Will they not faint by the way? How can they 
hope to reach their heavenly home without the 
Bread of Life? 

But the Lord is looking on them with the 
same infinite compassion, and He is saying to 
me and to you, ‘ 4 Give ye them to eat . 9 9 Is there 
not here, this evening, among you Martel peo- 
ple, a lad with five barley loaves and two small 
fishes for the Lord’s use? It seemed so little 
to the disciples, scarcely worthy of mention. 
“What are they among so many?” Merely 
enough for two or three, and here are five 
thousand and more. But the Lord said, 
“Bring them hither to Me.” He had no need 
of them. He could have commanded the stones 
to be made bread ; He could have called manna 
down from heaven; He could have satisfied 
them with a word; but He was graciously 
pleased to take that poor and humble little store 
in His all-powerful hand ; and it was sufficient ; 
the people were filled, they had as much as they 
36 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


would, and there were yet fragments that re- 
mained. 

Never think of the smallness, the poorness 
of the instrument, when it is the Master’s hand 
that uses it — He Who made this lovely world 
out of chaos, and formed the glorious light out 
of utter darkness. Do not be kept back by false 
humility, by thinking too much of the insignifi- 
cance and worthlessness of the gift. Give your 
best— give your all. “ Bring them hither to 
Me,” saith the Lord. What have you to give? 
Turn over your store,— yourself, that is best 
of all, most worthy offering, poor though it 
may be— your money, your time, your influence, 
your prayers. 

Who so poor but that he has one or more of 
these barley loaves of daily life to offer to Him 
Who gave us all? I am not here to beg and en- 
treat for your money, though to our dim sight 
it seems sorely needed just now, when, from 
village after village, the cry comes to me for 
teachers and for light, and I have no men or 
means to send them ; and worse still is the silence 
of those who are in such utter darkness they do 
37 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


not know their own need. But still we know 

I 

and believe that it is the Lord’s work, and it 
will be done. It may not be by me or you, but 
in His own good time it will be done. He does 
not need your money; He only offers you the 
glorious privilege of being fellow-workers with 
Him. Yours is the loss if you do not heed; the 
work will not suffer; only you will have had 
no share ; only you may not have another oppor- 
tunity given you ; only the time may come when 
it will be said to you, “ Forasmuch as ye did 
it not to these” (who are indeed poor and sick 
and in prison) “ye did it not to Me.” 

It was not by any means what the almshouse 
men called ‘ ‘ a powerful discarse ’ ’ ; the old men 
belonging to Frowde’s charity, in their snuff- 
colored coats, each with a large F on the left 
shoulder, clustering round the north door after 
service, shook their heads in disapproval. 

“He don’t wrustle with ’um,” said old 
Jacobs; “he ain’t tit to hold a candle to old 
Thwackum, down at Ebenezer. Why, I have 
seen him punish that there pulpit cushion till 
the dust came out like anything, and he had to 
38 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


take off his neckcloth, it were that wet; that’s 
what I call preaching, now, and to think of the 
likes of this ’un being a Bishop. ’ ’ 

Miss Baker, too, of the firm of Silver & 
Baker, drapers, in High Street, expressed her 
opinion in a high key, under an umbrella, as 
she went home along Church Lane, “that he did 
not preach the gospel”; but then she was very 
particular, and the Apostle Paul would himself 
scarcely have come up to her standard of 
“gospel” sermons. 

There was not a very good collection, either. 
You see, it was partly from its being a wet 
evening, so that the congregation was altogether 
small ; and it had not been given out on the pre- 
ceding Sunday; and no hills had been printed 
and posted on the church doors and principal 
public houses in the town, as was always done 
in the case of sermons in aid of the Irish Church 
Mission, or the Jews’ Society. So people had 
not been attracted by the announcement of a 
real live Bishop; and those who came had not 
had time to get small change; and so at the 
end of the sermon, with the best intentions and 
39 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


a natural dislike to pass tlie basket without giv- 
ing anything, they found themselves devoid of 
the necessary threepenny-bits and sixpences. 

So, when Mr. Mackenzzie, the tall lawyer, who 
always held the basket lined with green baize 
at the north door, emptied its contents on the 
vestry table, and the other baskets added their 
quota, there was but a poor show; and Mr. 
Peters, kind man, when Mr. Malone was not 
looking, slipped a sovereign out of his waist- 
coat pocket to add to the heap, more for the 
honor of Martel than from interest in the Mis- 
sion ; and he explained that unfortunately some 
of his best people were not at church, and that 
they had had a collection so very recently, and 
that he hoped that next time the Bishop was in 
those parts— but here a warning glance from 
Mr. Malone cut him short, and he did not com- 
mit himself further. 

What a fortunate thing it was that Mr. Peters 
had a curate of such high principle! 

“Who was the old woman sitting in front 
of Wyatt V 9 John Rossiter asked his mother, 
when the brougham door was closed and they 
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Gtoatm Reitch Bail*.. 

Miss Toosey's Mission. 

“SLIPPED A SOVEREIGN OUT OF HIS WAISTCOAT POCKET.” 


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MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


were going down High Street slowly, with the 
drag on, for it was very steep, with a blurred 
view of lights and moving umbrellas through 
the rainy windows. 

“My dear John, do you suppose I know every 
old woman in Martel ? ’ 7 

“No; hut I thought you might have noticed 
her ; her face was a sight to see in the sermon. ’ ’ 

“Well, John, ” Mrs. Rossiter answered, rather 
fretfully, feeling conscious of a temporary 
oblivion on her own part in the middle of the 
sermon, “it was no wonder if any one went 
to sleep ; the church was so hot ; I felt quite faint 
myself. ’ 7 

And she felt whether her bonnet had got 
pushed on one side, and hoped she had not 
wakened with a snore. 

John laughed. “I don’t mean a sight to see 
that way, mother; that’s not so very unusual , 
at Martel ; but it was her absorbed interest that 
struck me as something out of the way.” 

“It must have been one of the young women 
at Purts’s.” 

“My dear mother, don’t insult those elegant 
43 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


creatures by supposing they would put on any- 
thing half so respectable as my old woman’s 
bonnet ; they would rather die first. ’ ’ 

‘ 4 Then I don’t know who it could have been, 
unless it was Miss Toosey— lavender ribbons 
and hair done in a little curl on each side % Ah, 
then it is. Her father was old Toosey, the 
doctor ; he was parish doctor when we first came 
to Brooklands ; and she was a pretty young girl 
in a green spencer; and your father used to 
say—” 

And here followed reminiscences unconnected 
with Miss Toosey ’s Mission, which I need not 
chronicle. 

Mrs. Rossiter lived two miles from Martel, 
at Brooklands, and she attended church regu- 
larly twice on Sunday, “because it is a duty to 
set a right example to the lower orders.” So 
the lower orders around Brooklands— mostly, 
as far as the men were concerned, smoking 
their pipes in their shirt sleeves, hanging over 
a pigsty, or nursing their babies; mostly, as far 
as the women were concerned, waxing fierce in 
preparations for dinner, or gossiping with their 
44 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


next-door neighbors— saw the Brooklands 
brougham pass four times on Sunday; and the 
children ran after and shouted, ‘ 6 Whip be- 
hind !” and the babies were possessed with 
suicidal interest in the horses’ feet, and toddled 
or crawled or rolled into imminent danger, ac- 
cording to their age or walking capacities. 

When John Rossiter was down from London 
he went with his mother, and when he was not 
she went alone, because Humphrey altogether 
declined to go. 

“It was more than any fellow could stand,’ ’ 
he said, gnawing at his yellow mustache, and 
looking down at his mother with those hand- 
some, idle gray eyes of his, which were the most 
convincing of arguments, before which all her 
excellent reasons for attending church— such as 
“what people would say,” and “how it would 
look,” and “what a bad example it would set,” 
if he did not go— crumbled to ashes. She found 
John more amenable; but I do not on this ac- 
count credit John with any great superiority to 
Humphrey, only that he had greater powers of 
endurance, and was not so sure as Humphrey 
45 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


that the very surest way to please his mother was 
to please himself. 

Then, too, Sunday mornings at Brooklands 
were apt to hang heavy on his hands, for he had 
not the resources of Humphrey. He could not 
spend an hour or two in contented contemplation 
of a family of fox-terrier puppies ; he found that 
“the points’ ’ of the very cleverest little mare in 
creation palled after five minutes’ serious con- 
sideration, and that the conversation of grooms 
and stablemen still left a good deal to he desired 
in the way of entertainment ; in fact, he had none 
of the elevated and refined tastes of an English 
country gentleman; so John Rossiter went to 
church with his mother, and endured, with equal 
stoicism, sermons from Mr. Peters, Mr. Glover, 
or Mr. Malone. 

He did not yawn in the undisguised manner of 
E)r. Gardener Jones opposite, who let every one 
see what a fine set of teeth he had, and healthy 
red tongue, at short intervals ; he did not go to 
sleep and snore like old Mrs. Robbins, and one 
or two more; but when the regulation half 
hour was over, his eyebrows would rise and the 
46 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


calm inattention of his face become ruffled, and 
his hand move quietly to his waistcoat pocket 
and his watch appear, an action which Mr. 
Glover felt acutely in every fibre, though his 
back was turned to John Rossiter, and he would 
grow red to the very finger-tips, and his 
“finally,” “lastly,” and “in conclusion” would 
get sadly muddled in his nervous efforts to 
make short cuts to the end. 

So strong had this habit of inattention be- 
come, that it would have required something 
much more striking than our missionary Bishop 
to startle him out of it; and it was only the 
sight of Miss Toosey’s face that brought back 
his thoughts from their wanderings, to Martel 
church and its sleepy congregation, and the 
Bishop’s voice from the high pulpit. He could 
see her through a vista of heads between Mr. 
Cooper’s bald head and Miss Purts’s feathers 
and pink rosebuds ; now and then the view was 
cut off by Mrs. Robbins giving a convulsive nod, 
or one of the little Miss Coopers fidgeting up a 
broad-brimmed hat. 

“Was the sermon so eloquent?” John Ros- 

47 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


siter wondered. Certainly that listening, rapt 
face was— quite a common, little, wizen, old- 
maidish face, with nothing intellectual or noble 
about it, and yet transfigured into something 
like beauty with the brightness of a reflected 
light. Don’t you know how sometimes a scrap 
of broken glass on a dust heap will catch the 
sunlight and shine with quite dazzling brilliancy, 
and how a little, smutty raindrop in a London 
court will hold the sun and a gleaming, chang- 
ing rainbow in its little mirror*? 


48 


FROM AFRIC’S CORAL STRAND” 


49 
















CHAPTER III 

“from afric's coral strand ’ 9 

u \ M THERE does Miss Toosey live?” said 
\\ John Rossiter on Monday morning. 

“I think I may as well go and call 
on her, as I have nothing else to do.” 

I do not know what impelled him to go. It 
is impossible to define motives accurately, even 
our own. We cannot say sometimes why we do 
a thing; every reason may be against it— com- 
mon sense, habit, inclination, experience, duty, 
all may be pulling the other way, and yet we 
tear ourselves loose and do the thing, urged 
by some invisible motive of whose existence we 
are hardly conscious. And if it is so in our- 
selves, how much more difficult to dissect other 
people’s motives! and it is generally safer to 
leave the cause alone altogether, and only re- 
gard the effects produced. So it is enough to 
say that, on that Monday morning, Miss Toosey 

4 — Miss Toosey' s Mission. ^ I 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


heard the rattle of wheels along North Street, 
and, looking out, saw the Rossiters’ dog-cart 
and high-stepping chestnut mare, which, to her 
extreme surprise, stopped in front of her door. 

“Something wrong with the harness,’ ’ she 
concluded, as the little groom flew out and 
stood at the horse ’s head, with his arms crossed. 

“Bless the child !” Miss Toosey said, “as if 
the creature could not have swallowed him at 
a mouthful, top-boots and all!” 

But her observation of the groom from the 
bed-room window was interrupted by a loud 
knock at the door, and before she had time to 
tie her cap-strings, or put a pin in the back of 
her collar, Betty came rushing up, out of breath 
and red-faced, with a card held in the corner 
of her apron, hearing the name, “Mr. John 
Rossiter.” 

“And he said he hoped as how you’d excuse 
his calling so early— and a flower in his buttton- 
hole beautiful,” added Betty in a snorting 
whisper, distinctly audible in the parlor below. 

Then followed some hasty opening and 
shutting of drawers, and hurried footsteps ; and 
52 


I, 

I L 


^ ( ! l 

nf 111' 



Seorp-e Reiter B n ll. ^ 


Miss Toosey's Mission. 

“WITH A CARD HELD IN THE CORNER OF HER APRON.” 


53 



MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 

then Miss Toosey descended, rather fluttered 
and nervous, with her Sunday cap on, and a 
clean pocket handkerchief. 

“I must introduce myself, Miss Toosey,” 
John said, “for I dare say you have quite for- ' 
gotten me. ’ ’ 

“Forgotten you, Mr. John? Why, I knew 
you long before you were horn or thought of. 
Oh, dear!” said Miss Toosey, “I don’t mean 
that, of course ; but I knew your mamma before 
she was born—” 

“I ought to apologize,” John struck in, 
anxious to save Miss Toosey from any further 
floundering in the bogs of memory, “for coming 
so early; but the fact is that I am going up to 
London this evening; and my mother tells me 
that Dr. Toosey had a very capital cure for 
toothache, and she thought you would very 
likely have kept it, and would let me have it.” 

Impostor that he was! looking at her with 
such serious, earnest eyes, when he had com- 
posed this ridiculous and barefaced excuse for 
calling as he came along. 

Miss Toosey racked her brain to remember 
55 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


this renowned remedy, and could only recall 
an occasion when she had toothache, and her 
father dragged out a double tooth, with great 
exertion and bad language on his part, and 
great pain and many tears on hers. 

“I cannot quite remember the remedy your 
mamma means; but I have a book full of very 
valuable prescriptions, which I will find at 
once. ’ ’ 

‘ ‘Pray, don’t trouble, Miss Toosey; I have no 
toothache at present; but if you would let my 
mother have it some time at your leisure, I 
should be greatly obliged.” 

And then they talked for five minutes about 
toothache; and John, smiling, showed such 
white, even teeth that you would have fancied 
that he had not had much trouble with them; 
and you would have fancied right. 

“What a curious book you have here,” John 
Rossiter said, looking at a book lying open 
on the table. It was an old book called “Voy- 
ages and Adventures”; and it was open at an 
awful picture of a cannibal feast, with a man 
being roasted in front of a fire, and a group 
56 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


of savages dancing ferociously around, in all 
the horrors of war-paint and feathers, and in a 
simple but effective costume of a necklace, a 
fringe around the waist, a ring in the nose, 
and a penny in the under lip. 

Miss Toosey blushed; she was not used to 
fashionable picture galleries where Eves and 
Venuses, in unadorned beauty, are admired and 
criticised by the sensible young people of the 
present day. 

“Though to he sure,” she said afterwards, 
“it’s not so bad, as the poor things are black, 
so they don’t look quite so naked; and I always 
think a white pig is a more indecent looking 
creature than a black one.” 

So she turned his attention with great tact 
to the atlas that was also lying open on the table. 
It was the atlas that was in use fifty years ago, 
and which had been bought for Miss Toosey 
when she went to Miss Singer’s “Academy for 
Young Ladies” to be finished. At this abode of 
learning, she had been taught to make wax 
flowers and do crochet, to speak a few words of 
what was supposed to be French, and to play 
5 7 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


a tune or two laboriously on the piano, an edu- 
cation which was considered very elegant and 
elaborate at that time, but would hardly, I 
am afraid, qualify her for one of the Oxford 
and Cambridge local examinations, or even for 
a very high standard at a national school. 

She had also learnt a little geography and 
the use of the globes, but not enough to survive 
for fifty years; and she felt quite at sea this 
morning, when she reached down the long- 
unused atlas to find the position of the diocese 
of Nawaub, and, after long study, had arrived 
at the conclusion that it must be on the celestial 
globe, which had always been a puzzle to her. 

It was no wonder that she had not been able 
to find Nawaub, for where the towns and rivers 
and mountains and plains stood, which the 
Bishop had described, there was only marked on 
the map, “Undiscovered territory / 9 a vague- 
looking spot altogether, gradually shading off 
into the sea without any distinct red or blue 
line to mark the extent of terra firma, as in 
other parts of the world. 

John Rossiter showed her where he imagined 
58 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


Nawaub to be, and then inquired if she were 
interested in Missions. 

“Well, Mr. John,” Miss Toosey said, “I don’t 
mind telling you, though I’ve not told anyone 
else, except Betty; but I’ve made up my mind 
to go out to Nawaub as soon as I can arrange 
everything. ’ ’ 

“As a missionary, Miss Toosey?” 

“Yes, Mr. John, as a missionary.” 

She spoke quite quietly, as if she were not 
sixty-five with a tendency to asthma, and more 
than a tendency to rheumatism,— a nervous, 
fidgetty old maid, to whom a journey to Bristol 
was an event to flutter the nerves, and cause 
sleepless nights, and take away the appetite 
for some time beforehand. I think the very 
magnitude of her resolution took away her at- 
tention from the terrible details, just as we lose 
sight of the precipices, chasms, and rocks that 
lie between, when we are looking to the moun- 
tain top. 

The way to Bristol was beset with dangers, 
such as losing the train, getting wrong change 
when you take your ticket, the draughtiness of 
59 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


the waiting-room, the incivility of the porters, 
the trains starting from unexpected platforms, 
the difficulty of opening doors and shutting 
windows, the constant tendency to get into 
smoking carriages by mistake, not to speak of 
railway accidents, and murderers and thieves 
for traveling companions; but these were lost 
sight of in a prospect of a journey to the other 
end of the world, full of real, substantial dan- 
gers of which she was ignorant. This ignor- 
ance was, no doubt, a great help to her in some 
ways; she could not form the slightest idea of 
what a missionary’s life really is; nor can you, 
reader, nor can I, though we may have read 
missionary books by the dozen, which Miss 
Toosey had not. 

But this same ignorance, while it covered up 
many real difficulties, also painted grotesque 
horrors before Miss Toosey ’s mind, which might 
well have frightened any old maiden lady of 
sixty-five. She mixed up “ Greenland’s icy 
mountains” and “Afric’s coral strands” with 
great impartiality in her ideas of Nawaub, form- 
ing such a frightful combination of sandy 
60 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


deserts and icebergs, lions and white bears, 
naked black savages and snowdrifts, that the 
stoutest heart might have quailed at the pros- 
pect ; and yet, when Miss Toosey came down to 
breakfast that morning, with her mind firmly 
made up to the venture, her little maid, Betty, 
did not notice anything remarkable about her, 
except that her cap was put on wrong side in 
front— which was not a very unusual occur- 
rence— and that she stirred up her tea with 
her spectacles once. 

Her interview with Betty had been rather 
upsetting. Betty was not quick at taking in 
new ideas ; and she had got it so firmly into her 
head that Miss Toosey was wishing to admin- 
ister a reproof to her about the handle of a 
certain vegetable dish, “ which come to pieces in 
my hand as was that cracked, ’ ’ that it was some 
time before she could be led to think differently ; 
but when at last a ray of the truth penetrated 
her mental fog, her feelings can only be de- 
scribed by her own ejaculation, “Lor, now!” 
which I fear may offend ears polite. She had 
not been at church the evening before, having 
61 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


stepped around to see* her mother, who was 
‘ ‘ doing nicely, thank, you, with her fourteenth, 
a fine boy, as kep’ on with fits constant, 
till Mr. Glover half christened him, which 
James Joseph is his name, and better ever 
since. ’ ’ 

So it required all Miss Toosey ’s eloquence 
to put her scheme before Betty’s plain common 
sense, so as to appear anything hut a very crazy 
notion after all; and it was not till after half 
an hour’s severe talking, and more than one 
tear falling on the two and a half pounds of 
neck of mutton, that Betty gave in, which she 
did by throwing her apron over her head, and 
declaring, with a sob, that if Miss Toosey 
“ would go for to do such a thing, she (Betty) 
would take and go, too, that she would”; and 
Miss Toosey had to entreat her to remember 
her poor mother before making up her mind to 
such a step. 

But to come back to John Rossiter. He 
was a barrister, you must know, and used to 
examine witnesses, and to turn their heads in- 
side out to pick out the grains of truth con- 
62 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


cealed there ; and then, too, he had a great talent 
for listening, which is a rarer and more valu- 
able gift even than that of fluent speech, which 
he also had at command on occasion. He had, 
too, a sympathetic, attentive interest in his face, 
if it was assumed, would have made a great 
actor of him, and that opened the people’s 
hearts to him, as the sun does the flowers. And 
so Miss Toosey found herself laying her mit- 
tened hand on his coat sleeve, and looking up 
into his eyes for sympathy, and calling him “my 
dear,” “just for all the world,” she said, “as 
if he had been an old woman, too . 9 ’ 

And what did he think of it all? Was he 
laughing at her f Certainly now and then there 
was a little twitch at the corner of his mouth, 
and a sparkle in his eye, and once he laughed 
aloud in unconcealed amusement; but I like 
John Rossiter too well to believe that he was 
doing what Dr. Gardener Jones called “getting a 
rise out of the old lady . 9 ’ It was so very easy to 
to make fun of Miss Toosey, and draw her out 
and show up her absurdities,— even Mr. Glover, 
who was not a wit, could be exquisitely funny at 

63 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


her expense. But John Rossiter was too much 
of a sportsman to aim with his small-bore rifle 
at a little sparrow in a hedgerow; he left that 
sort of game for the catapults and pop-guns of 
the yokels. 

And so Miss Toosey confided to him all the 
difficulties that had already come crowding into 
her head as she sat over her work that morning, 
any one of which would have occupied her mind 
for days at any other time,— the giving notice 
to leave her house, the disposal of the furniture, 
— “and you know, Mr. John, I have some really 
valuable pictures and things”; and she could 
not trust herself to glance at the portrait of old 
Toosey over the fireplace, in a black satin waist- 
coat and bunch of seals, a frilled shirt, a high 
complexion, and shiny, black hair, with Corinth- 
ian pillars behind him, lest her eyes, already 
brimful, should overflow. 

She even consulted him as to whether it would 
be worth while to order in more coal, and 
lamented that she should have taken her sitting 
in church for another whole year only last Sat- 
urday. And then, without quite knowing how, 
64 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


she found herself discussing that all-important 
subject, dress, with John Rossiter. 

4 ‘Though to he sure, Mr. John, how should 
you know about such things ?” 

“Indeed, Miss Toosey, I’m not so ignorant as 
you think ; and I quite agree with you that noth- 
ing looks so nice as a black silk on Sunday.” 

And Miss Toosey at once resolved to put a 
new braid around the bottom of the skirt as a 
good beginning of her preparations. 

“I’ve got, upstairs,” Miss Toosey said, re- 
flectively, “a muslin dress that I wore when 
Rosina Smith was married. You remember 
Rosina Smith, Mr. John? No, of course not! 
She must have married before you were born. 
Sweet girl, Mr. John, very sweet! That dress 
has been rough dried for thirty years, and it’s 
not quite in the fashion that ladies wear now; 
in fact, the skirt has only three breadths, which 
is scanty, you know, as dresses go ; hut I 
thought,” and there Miss Toosey glanced 
timidly at the picture of the cannibals, which 
still lay open, ‘ ‘ that perhaps it would not matter 
out there.” 


65 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


‘‘No, indeed, Miss Toosey,” John answered, 
“I should think that three breadths would ap- 
pear liberal and ample allowance among people 
whose skirts”— he was going to say— “ are con- 
spicuous from their absence/ ’ but from Miss 
Toosey ? s heightened color he changed it to “are 
not court trains. ’ ’ 

The next question was whether she had better 
have it got up before leaving Martel. 

4 ‘ It might get crumpled in packing ; but then, 
how can one guess what sort of laundresses 
one may find at the other side of the world 
—not used, most likely, to getting up fine 
things . 9 9 

“I have heard,” said John, very seriously, 
“that in some parts missionaries try as much as 
possible to become like the nations they are 
wishing to convert, and that the Roman Catholic 
priests in China shave their heads and wear 
pigtails . 9 9 

“Yes, Mr. John, I have heard that,” Miss 
Toosey said; “and their wives” (you see, she 
did not rightly understand the arrangements of 
our sister Church as to the celibacy of the 
66 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


clergy) " cripple their feet in small shoes, 
blacken their teeth, and let their finger-nails 
grow. ’ ’ 

“I suppose,” says John, drawing " Voyages 
and Adventures ’ ’ nearer, and looking at the pic- 
tures reflectively, 4 'that the Nawaub mission- 
aries don’t go in for that sort of thing.” 

Miss Toosey grew red to the very finger-tips, 
and her back stiffened with horror. 

"No, Mr. John, there is a point beyond which 
I cannot go ! ” 

"To be sure! to be sure!” said John, con- 
solingly, "and you see there were no signs of 
anything of the kind about the Bishop. ’ ’ 

"Then there is the food,” Miss Toosey 
went on, reminded of the subject by a whiff of 
roast mutton from the kitchen; "I’m afraid 
they are cannibals, and I don’t think I ever 
could get used to such a thing, for I have never 
been able to touch sucking pig since an uncle of 
mine said it was just like a baby, though, of 
course, he was only in joke.” 

John reassured her on this point. But now 
he presented quite a new difficulty to her mind. 

5 — Miss Toosey' s Mission. 67 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


“Do you understand the Nawaub language. 
I am told it is difficult to acquire.” 

It had never occurred to Miss Toosey that 
these mysterious people, who were a sort of 
combination of monkey and chimney sweep, 
spoke a language of their own which she could 
not understand, and that they might not be able 
to comprehend the pure Somersetshire English 
with which she meant to convert them. She had 
never been brought much in contact with for- 
eigners, so that she had never realized fully 
the effect of the Tower of Babel. 

One day a French beggar had come to the 
door, and Miss Toosey had summoned up 
courage to pronounce the magic words, “ Parlez 
vous Frangais which was one of the sentences 
she had learned at Miss Singer *s ; and the beg- 
gar (the French being proverbially quick- 
witted) had recognized his native tongue; and 
thereupon ensued such a torrent of rapid speech 
and violent gesticulation, such gabbling and 
grimacing, that Miss Toosey was quite fright- 
ened, and relapsed into plain English when 
she could edge in another word. But then this 
68 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


impudent fellow pretended lie did not under- 
stand, and kept on saying, “Not know de 
English vot you mean,” though Miss Toosey 
spoke slowly and very loud, and even finally 
tried a little broken English, which must he 
easier to foreigners than the ordinary style of 
speaking. But the man was obstinate, and went 
away at last shaking his head and shrugging 
his shoulders in a way which Miss Toosey felt 
was very impudent; “but then, poor creature, 
he may have been a papist.” 

“I’ve not thought about that, Mr. John; but 
I know that savages always like beads and 
looking-glasses, though what pleasure such re- 
markably plain people can get out of a looking- 
glass I can’t imagine. But I’ve a lot of beads 
put away in one of my boxes up-stairs when 
I’ve time for a regular good turn-out; and as 
for looking-glasses, I saw some the other day 
at Gaiter’s, with gilt frames, for a penny, that 
make one’s nose look crooked, and one eye 
larger than the other, that I think will do 
nicely. ’ ’ 

“By Jove!” says John, “an uncommonly 
69 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


good idea— the very thing! I’ll take a look at 
them as I go home, which I must do now, or I 
shall be late for lunch.” 

But before leaving he advised her not to do 
anything in a hurry, but before taking any de- 
cided step, such as having her dress starched, 
or giving notice to leave her house, or laying 
in a stock of looking-glasses, to consult some 
old friend, on whose opinion she could rely. 

“There’s Mackenzie,” he said, “why not go 
to him!” 

But Miss Toosey had an uncomfortable feel- 
ing about lawyers, connecting them with verses 
in the gospels beginning with “woe”; and 
though the little Mackenzies were her great 
friends and constant visitors, she avoided their 
father. She suggested Miss Baker; but when 
she added that she was “a really Christian 
person,” John discouraged the idea, and they 
finally agreed that she should consult Mr. 
Peters, who had known her nearly all her life. 

“He’s not a had sort of old fellow out of 
church,” John said, rather shocking Miss 
Toosey by his want of reverence for the rector; 

70 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


“and he has got some sense in his head as well 
as good nature. So you go to him, Miss Toosey, 
and the next time I come home, I ’ll come in and 
have another crack with you, if you are not off 
to the North Pole or the Moon.” 

John Rossiter smiled more than once as he 
drove home in the dog-cart, at the recollection 
of Miss Toosey ’s confidences; but I fear my 
readers may have grown impatient of the ab- 
surdities of an ignorant old woman, who had 
got a craze in her head. Yes, she was old and 
poor and weak and ignorant, it is quite true. 
It was a very contemptible barley-loaf which she 
had to offer, compared with your fine, wheaten 
cake of youth and riches and strength and learn- 
ing; but remember she offered her best freely, 
willingly, faithfully; and when once a thing is 
offered it is no longer the little barley-loaf in 
the lad’s hand, hut the miraculous, satisfying 
Bread of Heaven in the hand of the Lord of the 
Harvest, more than sufficient for the hungry 
multitude. 


7 1 

































GOD GIVES THE INCREASE’ 
































































































- 





















CHAPTER IV 


“ ‘god gives the increase’ ” 

“17 OU are making fun of me, Mr. John.” 

“I am incapable of such an action, 
Miss Toosey.” 

Six months have passed away since my last 
chapter, and John Rossiter has paid many 
visits to the little house in North Street. In- 
deed, he rarely came to Brooklands without 
going to see Miss Toosey, drawn by a strange 
attraction which he hardly understood himself ; 
though he once told his mother that he had 
fallen in love, and asked her how she would 
like Miss Toosey for a daughter-in-law. 

Miss Toosey is still at Martel, and likely to 
remain so. Her interview with Mr. Peters put 
an end to her idea of her becoming a mission- 
ary, as John Rossiter quite expected, and also 
provided the rector with a good joke, over 
which he laughs till the tears run down his 
75 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


cheeks. It was a very alarming interview to 
Miss Toosey altogether, as the rector was seized 
with an attack of coughing in the middle, and 
sputtered and choked till Miss Toosey longed 
to pat him on the back, if she had dared to ven- 
ture on such familiarity with a Church digni- 
tary; and for many months she puzzled Mrs. 
Peters by anxious inquiries after the rector’s 
cold and the sad delicacy of his throat, and 
advised gargling with port wine and alum, and 
other decoctions of marvelous efficacy. 

Miss Toosey ’s missionary ardor was by no 
means damped, only it was turned into a fresh 
channel. ‘ 4 Your money,” the Bishop had said, 
“was another of those barley-loaves of every- 
day life that most people had in some pro- 
portion to offer”; thinking principally of the 
luxury and extravagance of fashionable life, and 
of the superfluity that might so well he cast into 
his empty treasury. There was not much 
luxury or extravagance in the little house in 
North Street; indeed, it was only by close 
management that two ends could be brought to 
meet; and even in little charities to poor neigh- 
76 



Georcre SeJ / er St ill. 


Miss Toosey's Mission. 

“THE RECTOR WAS SEIZED WITH AN ATTACK OF COUGHING." 

77 





* 













MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


bors (infinitesimally small though they might 
be) she was never in danger of offering to God 
that which cost her nothing. 

So it was an unsatisfactory thing to review 
her expenditure, with a view to greater econ- 
omy, “with butchers ’ meat quite a fancy price, 
and everything else to match ’ ’ ; but she was not 
easily daunted, as you know, and she applied to 
Mr. Peters to procure her a box in which to 
collect for the Nawaub Mission. She did not 
allow him to forget it or to convince her that 
a Church Missionary box, or one for the Irish 
Society, would do quite as well; and when at 
last she had it, she carried it home with great 
pride, and gave it the place of honor in the 
center of her table on the bead mat, in place of 
the lava inkstand that had been one of Mrs. 
Toosey’s wedding presents. 

It was this box that was now forming the 
subject of conversation between her and Mr. 
Rossiter, for she was to take it that very after- 
noon to the rectory to be opened, and the con- 
tents were to be forwarded to the Bishop. John 
had been commenting on its weight, and had 
79 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


told Miss Toosey that she would be obliged to 
have the omnibus from the “Hare and Hounds” 
to take it to the rectory, or at any rate a wheel- 
barrow and a strong man. And so it came that 
she accused him of laughing at her. 

“But it really is very heavy. I wonder you 
are not afraid of thieves coming to carry it off 
at night.” 

“Well, Mr. John, I was rather nervous now 
and then. There have been very odd noises at 
night, and though Betty says it’s the mice, I 
can’t always quite believe it. I always hide the 
box when I go out, and now and then I forget 
where I put it; and, oh, dear! what a search 
we had the other day ! I was in such a fright, 
and where do you think it was? Why, behind 
the shavings in the fireplace. Wasn’t it a capi- 
tal place? No thief would have dreamt of look- 
ing there. ’ ’ 

“ It ’s a good thing that you are going to empty 
it to-day, or I might have been tempted to play 
burglar to-night.” 

“Well, you see, Mr. John, it’s not really so 
valuable as you might think, for it’s chiefly 
80 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


pence and a good sprinkling of farthings, and 
they don’t come up to much of a sum. You see 
I have been obliged to take a little here and a 
little there, not being rich, Mr. John, or having 
much to spare. One thing I always put in, 
‘Your change, with thanks’; don’t you know 
those pretty little envelopes that they put pence 
in at Knight’s and Jones’s and one or two other 
places, with ‘Your change, with thanks,’ in 
mauve on the back? I always took that for my 
box, and I felt quite pleased when they had not 
a threepenny bit, so that I got more pence. 
And then when the butcher’s book came to five 
and sixpence halfpenny, Mr. Barker often says, 
‘Never mind the halfpenny, Miss Toosey,’ and 
I put it into my box; and sometimes I get a 
halfpenny on the washing. Of course, it 
seems very little, but it all helps. 

“And then I fine myself. I got a good deal 
that way. A halfpenny if I lose my spectacles. 
A penny if I go to sleep in church ; yes, Mr. John, 
I’m sorry to say I do drop off now and then. 
I know it’s very wrong, but it’s wonderful how 
it cures you of such habits if you have to pay 
81 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


for them; I don’t lose my spectacles half so 
often as I used to, indeed I feel quite vexed 
sometimes that I don’t get more fines; but I 
don’t think it fair to lose them on purpose. 

“I might save a good deal more if it wasn’t 
for Betty. She’s a good girl and honest, and 
much attached to me; but she’s very obstinate 
and wrong-headed. The fuss that girl made 
about my letting the fire out now and then of 
an afternoon, for the winter has been mild, Mr. 
John, and coals such a price ! After I’d done it 
once or twice, she found out it was not an acci- 
dent, and she would come bouncing in and put 
on coals every half-hour, till there was a fire fit 
to roast an ox, and once she gave warning be- 
cause I did not take a second helping at dinner. 
But there’s one thing I can do without another 
year, which no one can object to, and that is my 
sitting in church. The free seats are so com- 
fortable that it really would he a change for 
the better, except, perhaps, as to the hearing.” 

Just at this point some fresh visitors arrived, 
and John prepared to go; but finding the pas- 
sage blocked by a double perambulator, and a 
82 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


smiling nurse and nursemaid exchanging con- 
fidences with Betty at the door, and hearing 
the tallest of the visitors (who was about as 
high as the table) declare that “Mamma said 
they were not to stop, but she sent her love 
and the Graphic,” he resumed his seat, and 
offered a knee and an inspection of his watch 
to the two nearest young Mackenzies. There 
were nine young Mackenzies, of all ages ; every 
year a fresh curly head or Sunday hat appeared 
in the square pew by the north door, which 
Mr. Peters compared to a pigeon pie, till at 
last it ran over altogether into another seat by 
the pulpit, which could hardly contain them 
now. 

Miss Toosey’s present visitors were the 
younger detachment, all of them pretty more or 
less with that beauty which has been called 
“the sacrament of goodness and innocence”— 
cheerful souls, not tall enough to see troubles, 
—very well contented with life as seen from 
near the ground, which is, I fancy, a much more 
amusing point of view than we enjoy. They 
had a good deal of information to give, unin- 

6 — Miss Toosey's Mission. 83 * 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


telligible to John, but Miss Toosey gave a free 
translation, which enlightened his darkness. 
Life was more than usually cheerful that morn- 
ing, for they had met that walking money-bag, 
papa, as they went out, whose store of pennies 
was inexhaustible when he could be cajoled or 
teased into feeling in his pocket. To-day, in a 
moment of lavish generosity, he had given a 
penny all round, even to Kitty, who had con- 
veyed it at once to her mouth, without waiting 
for the visit to Mrs. Goodenough ’s, which trans- 
formed pennies into all that heart can desire. 

“Mine penny !” says Mabel, who is rather 
solemnized by her position on John’s knee; and 
she allows him to catch a glimpse of her treas- 
ure, clasped tightly in her soft knitted glove, 
in which the fingers live all together in dimpled 
friendliness, and the thumb only enjoys a house 
to itself. 

“What are you going to buy?” asks John. 

“Bung,” is the decided answer. 

Meanwhile the other children are examining 
the money-box on the table, rattling its con- 
tents in a manner deafening to older ears, till 
84 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


Miss Toosey begins to tell them of the poor 
little black children who never go to church 
or say their prayers, which rouses great 
interest. 

4 ‘ Naughty, wicked little children,” is the uni- 
versal opinion. 

‘ 4 Poor little things ! ’ ’ says Miss Toosey, re- 
provingly, ‘ 4 they have not any church to go to, 
and they have never been taught to say their 
prayers . 1 ’ 

I am afraid some of the little Mackenzies 
were disposed to envy the little black children, 
who could go straight into their cribs when they 
were sleepy, and play at dolls any day in the 
week. But they were discreetly silent while 
Miss Toosey explained that the money in the 
box was to go out to make them good little 
black boys and girls. 

4 ‘ Make them white,” says Ben, decisively. 

Miss Toosey is embarrassed, regarding things 
from a severely literal point of view; but John 
comes to the rescue. 

“Yes, that’s about it, young man.” 

And just then Maudie discovers the “dear, 
85 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


little darling hole ’ ’ at the top where the pennies 
go in, and all the children admire it and feel 
it, and Mabel pats it with her woolly gloves, re- 
peating gravely, “Make black boy white.’ ’ 

I don’t know qnite how it happened, for all 
the other children were under the sofa, trying 
to catch Sammy the cat, and Miss Toosey dis- 
tracted by her anxiety lest they or the cat should 
get hurt, and Mabel was placidly tapping the 
box with her penny, repeating, “Make black 
boy white” at intervals; when John heard a 
sudden rattle, and, looking down, said ‘ 4 Hullo ! ’ ’ 
for the knitted glove was empty, and Mabel 
looked up at him with rather an awe-struck face, 
repeating, “Make black boy white.” 

“0 Mr. John!” Miss Toosey exclaimed, her 
eyes filling with tears, “the dear, sweet little 
angel, giving her little all to the Mission ! How 
touching !— how beautiful ! ’ ’ 

John, however, whose eyes were not full of 
tears, saw an ominous quivering about the little 
angel’s under lip, and an anxious feeling of 
knitted gloves around the “dear, darling little 
hole,” as if the penny might yet be recovered, 
86 





Miss Toosey's Mission. 

“MABEL PATS IT WITH HER WOOLLY GLOVES.” 


87 





MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


and as if the giver had not realized the fatal 
and irretrievable nature of putting into a mis- 
sionary-box. The full sense of her loss at last 
overwhelmed her, and she burst into uncontrol- 
lable grief, “I wants my penny’ ’ being the bur- 
den of the tale. 

It was in vain John handed her over to Miss 
Toosey, who quickly supplied her with another 
penny and supplemented it with a biscuit and a 
lump of sugar; it was not 4 ‘mine penny, what 
papa gave me!” and at last she was carried off 
sobbing and casting looks of fear and aversion 
at the missionary-box on the table. 

That afternoon, as John was on the way to 
the station, he saw Miss Toosey wending her 
way thoughtfully up High Street, and he crossed 
over and joined her. She was on her way 
home from the rectory, and her first remark to 
John Rossiter was, “Do you believe in 
miracles, Mr. John?” 

“As described in the Bible?” 

“Oh, no; of course every one believes in 
them. I mean miracles now.” 

“Well, Miss Toosey, if you mean winking 
89 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


Virgins and hysterical peasant girls, I am afraid 
I am rather skeptical.’ ’ 

“Ah, Mr. John! that’s what I thought to 
myself. It’s popish to believe in such things 
nowadays,— all superstition and such like,— so 
I’m glad I did not tell Miss Baker what came 
into my head. ’ ’ 

“May I ask what it was? I don’t think you 
are at all popish.” 

“Well, I’ll tell you. It’s my missionary-box. 
Now, Mr. John, how much do you think there 
was in it?” 

“I have not the least idea.” 

“Well, there was six pounds nine and seven- 
pence three farthings.” Miss Toosey’s voice 
sank to an impressive whisper, and she stood 
still, looking at John as if he might be so over- 
come by surprise as to drop his hag and 
umbrella, or require support to prevent him 
from falling. But he only said,— 

“You don’t say so,” in a very ordinary tone 
of voice. 

“Six pounds nine and sevenpence three far- 
things,” repeated Miss Toosey, emphasizing the 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


six pounds, as if lie had not appreciated the 
vastness of the sum. . 

“Ah!’ said John; “I’m sure it does credit 
to you, Miss Toosey; who would have thought 
that 4 Your change, with thanks’ would have 
added up so. I am afraid you must have gone 
to sleep in church very often.” 

“But it could not have been that,” went on 
Miss Toosey, solemnly. “One pound nine and 
sevenpence three farthings were principally in 
coppers, and any sixpenny or fourpenny bits 
I could account for. But the five pounds were 
in a note, so it could not have been change or 
a fine. ’ ’ 

“You must have slipped it in some day by 
chance with other money.” 

“No, for I never have notes. When I draw 
my money I always get it in gold, for I’m al- 
ways afraid of notes blowing into the fire or 
getting torn up. And, besides,” went on Miss 
Toosey, “I am not so rich, Mr. John, that I 
could lose even sixpence without knowing it.” 

“It is very strange,” said John. 

1 1 Strange ! ’ ’ seemed a mild expression to Miss 
91 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


Toosey, to whom it appeared miraculous. “I 
don’t know liow to account for it, Mr. John. 
I suppose it’s wrong to think it a miracle, hut 
I could not help thinking of what happened this 
morning. ’ ’ 

“What was that?” 

“Why, don’t you remember that dear child 
putting her penny into the box?” 

“Oh, yes; and making such a hullaballoo 
afterwards. ’ ’ 

Miss Toosey did not wish to recall that part 
of the offair. “It was so sweetly done.” 

“Yes; but you gave it back directly.” 

Miss Toosey felt quite cross at such incon- 
venient remarks interrupting her miracle; hut 
she continued, relapsing into a confidential 
whisper,— 

“ You see, Mr. John, it was a lad that brought 
the five barley-loaves, and I thought perhaps 
the baby’s penny might have been turned into 
a five-pound note.” 

John made no comment, and she went on as 
much to herself as to him,— 

“I suppose it’s popish to think of such a 
92 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


thing; and besides one would have thought if 
it had been a miracle it would have been quite 
a new Bank of England note ; but it was one of 
Tuckey’s, crumpled and dirty, that had been cut 
in half, and joined down the middle with the 
edge of stamps, and it had Mr. Purts’s name 
written on the back. But still,” said Miss 
Toosey, wistfully, as they came to the station- 
road, and John shook hands in parting, 4 ‘it’s 
God that gives the increase, anyhow, miracle 
or not, and He knows all about it. ’ ’ 


93 



1 
















* 








‘“FRIEND, COME UP HIGHER 


95 



CHAPTER V 


“ ‘FRIEND, COME UP HIGHER* 99 

M IRACLES do not happen every day; 

and Miss Toosey ’s money-box did not 
contain a bank-note the next time it 
was opened, or any sum that Miss Toosey 
could not well account for ; indeed, it was rather 
less than more than she expected, even though 
the cost of her sitting in church was added to 
it. She did not, however, carry out her plan 
of sitting in the free seats, for when she spoke 
to Mr. Budd about giving up her seat, Mr. 
Peters happened to be present, and he would 
not hear of such a thing. “Why, Miss Toosey, 
we should not know ourselves if you were not in 
your usual place.’ ’ And Mr. Budd added, that 
“Some one, as did not wish to be mentioned, had 
offered to pay the rent rather than Miss Toosey 
should give it up.” So it was arranged that 
she should still occupy the seat, at any rate till 
97 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


it was wanted for some one else; and as the 
Martel congregation were not overflowing, Miss 
Toosey was not likely to be turned out. She did 
not quite like this arrangement; she felt rather 
like an impostor as she passed the free seats, 
and Mr. Wyatt opened the pew-door for her; 
and it took off much of the pleasure when she 
dropped the money (that would otherwise have 

been paid to Mr. Budd) into her box; for, as she 

* 

said, she did not feel the want of it, so it hardly 
seemed like giving at all. 

I must not stop to describe at any length 
Miss Toosey J s other missionary efforts, though 
she did not forget the other barley-loaves of 
which the Bishop had spoken,— “her time, her 
influence, and her prayers,”— or I could tell you 
of her numerous disappointments in answering 
advertisements such as,— “To those of either 
sex anxious to increase their income”; and 
“£2 weekly easily realized”; and of her ven- 
turing a 5s. subscription to a “Ladies’ Needle- 
work Society,” which entitled her to send six 
articles for sale to a shop in a fashionable part 
of London; and how she accomplished an anti- 
98 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


macassar of elaborate design to send np there. 

As to her influence, that was a puzzling matter 
to one who had such an humble opinion of her- 
self as Miss Toosey; and she nearly worked 
herself into a nervous fever through her at- 
tempts to mention the subject to some of the 
wealthy shopkeepers or others in Martel; and 
at last she adopted the plan of distributing 
leaflets, and invested in a small bundle on mis- 
sionary subjects, which she left about in a sur- 
reptitious, stealthy way, in shops, or at the 
railway station, or slipped between the pages 
of a “Society” book, or even sometimes on the 
high road, with a stone to keep them from blow- 
ing away. 

Even with these precautions, she managed 
to give great offence to Mrs. Gardener Jones, 
who found a leaflet in a book sent on from Miss 
Toosey ’s, and who, being of a very dark com- 
plexion and Eastern cast of countenance, took 
the matter as a personal insinuation about her 
birth. So it was quite a relief to Miss Toosey 
to run to the last barley-loaf that the Bishop 
had mentioned,— “her prayers”; at any rate, 

7— Miss Toosey' s Mission. q<I) 

L.oFC. 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


she could give them with all her heart. She 
found a missionary prayer in an old magazine, 
written in an inflated, pompous style, with long 
words and involved sentences, as different as 
possible from the great simplicity of that 
prayer in which children of all ages and de- 
grees of learning through all time are taught 
to address 4 4 Our Father”; but she was not 
critical; and the feeling she expressed in those 
words was not rendered less simple or earnest 
by its pompous clothing. 

“ Where is Miss Toosey?” John Rossiter 
asked his mother one Sunday morning, as they 
drove home from church; “she was not there 
this morning.’ ’ 

“Well, I think I heard some one say she was 
ill. Yes, it was Mr. Ryder told me she was laid 
up with cold or something. She has not been 
at church for several Sundays; and really the 
draught from the vestry door is dreadful.” 

After church that evening, a sudden impulse 
seized John to go and see how Miss Toosey 
was; and when he had packed his mother into 
the brougham, with her rugs and furs he turned 


ioo 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


off towards North Street, among the groups of 
people returning from church. It was a cold 
October evening, with great, solemn, bright 
stars overhead, and a frosty stillness in the air, 
which sets one listening for something above 
the trifling noises of this little world. Sunday 
visitors were rare at Miss Toosey’s, and, as 
Betty said, “It give her quite a turn” when 
John’s sharp knock came at the door. 

“She’s very middlin’,” she said, in answer to 
John’s inquiries; “and she’ve been terribly 
low this evening, as ain’t like her.” 

“What’s the matter!” 

“Well, Mr. Ryder do say as it’s the brongty- 
pus and indigestion of the lungs,” said Betty, in 
an awful voice, feeling that so many syllables 
must prove fatal ; ‘ ‘ and as I was setting by the 
kitching fire last night a coffin popped right out, 
and— ’ ’ 

“All right,” said John. “Is she in bed!” 

“No; she ain’t kep’ her bed a whole day, 
though she did ought to. But come in, doee now ; 
it will cheer her up a bit to see you. ” 

John Rossiter was quite shocked to see the 

IOI 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


change in Miss Toosey when he went into the 
parlor. She was sitting in the arm-chair by the 
fire, wrapped up in a big shawl, looking so 
small and shrunken and old and feeble that 
you could hardly have recognized the brisk 
little lady who was prepared to cross the seas 
and enter on the toils and perils of a missionary 
life; indeed, she looked more ready for the last 
short journey across Jordan’s narrow stream, 
which ends all our traveling days, and to enter 
into the life where toils and perils are replaced 
by rest. 

She had been crying, too, and could hardly 
summon up a wintry smile to receive John; and 
the tears overflowed more than once while he 
talked of his journey down, and his mother’s 
rheumatism, and the tree that had been blown 
down the night before in their garden, trying 
to interest her and distract her thoughts by 
talking on indifferent subjects. His hand was 
resting on the table as he spoke, and, without 
thinking, he took hold of the missionary-box 
close by, and weighed it in his fingers. He 
hardly knew what he had in his hand till Miss 


102 



Rtitfr flu'//. 


Miss Toosey's Mission. 


“SHE WAS SITTING IN THE ARM-CHAIR BY THE FIRE. 


>* 


103 





MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


Toosey burst out crying, and covered her eyes 
with her handkerchief. 

“It is nearly empty,’ ’ sobbed the poor old 
lady ; 4 ‘ nearly empty ! ’ ’ 

And then J ohn Rossiter pulled his chair 
nearer to hers, and laid one of his warm, strong 
hands on her poor, little, weak, cold one, and 
said : ‘ ‘ What is it you are fretting about ? Tell 
me.” 

And then she told him, sometimes interrupted 
by her sobs, sometimes by the fits of coughing 
that left her very breathless and exhausted. It 
had all failed, all the five barley-loaves she had 
had to offer ; they were all worthless. She was 
too old and foolish and ignorant to give herself 
for the work; she was too poor to give any 
money, and the little she had saved with much 
care must now go for the doctor’s bill; she had 
tried to give her time, but her antimacassars 
would not sell, and she could not paint pho- 
tographs; then she tried her influence; but she 
did not think she had any, for every one laughed 
when she spoke to them about the missions, and 
Mrs. Gardener Jones was offended when she 


105 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


gave her a tract with a negro’s face on it, and 
“Am I not a man and a brother?” 

“Then there was only my prayers, Mr. John, 
and I did think I could have done that at least ; 
and I did keep on regularly with that prayer 
out of the magazine, but the last three nights 
I’ve been so tired and worn out that Betty would 
make me say my prayers after I was in bed; 
and I don’t really think I could have knelt 
down; and every night I’ve dropped off to sleep 
before I got to the poor heathen. So I’ve failed 
in that, too. And I’ve been thinking, thinking, 
thinking, as I sat here to-night, Mr. John, that 
perhaps the Lord would not take my barley- 
loaves, because they were so good-for-nothing ; 
but I ’d nothing else, nothing else ! ’ ’ 

I do not think that John Rossiter had ever 
spoken a word on religious subjects in his life; 
he avoided discussion on such matters like the 
plague ; and he was one of those reserved, deep 
natures who shrink from letting curious eyes 
peer into the sanctuary of their faith, and from 
dissecting their religious opinions with that 
clumsy scalpel, the tongue. Uninspired words 
106 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


seemed to him to be too rude and unwieldy to 
convey the subtle mysteries of faith, to break 
with their jarring insufficiency into the harmony 
of praise, to weigh down the wing of prayer that 
is struggling towards heaven, to trouble the 
waters where we are trying to see the reflection 
‘ i as in a glass darkly. ’ ’ There is but one power 
can open the close-sealed lips of such a nature, 
and that is when the angel takes a live coal from 
the great altar of love and lays it on his mouth ; 
and then he speaks, and with a power 
wanting in the glib outpouring of a shallower 
nature. 

And so John Rossiter found himself speaking 
words of comfort to Miss Toosey, which seemed 
like a new language to his unaccustomed lips; 
telling her how small, how poor everything 
earthly is in God’s sight, and yet how nothing 
is too small, nothing too poor for the good 
Lord’s notice; how the greatest saint is, after 
all, only an unprofitable servant; and how He 
can take a loving, humble heart in His hand and 
make it as much as He would. 

“And you’re sure, quite sure, that it’s not 
107 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


because He’s angry with me that He has not 
made use of me!” 

“Dear old friend, He may make use of you 
yet.” 

She was coughing badly just then, and when 
the fit was over she shook her head. “Not 
very likely now, Mr. John; but He knows I was 
willing, so it doesn’t matter.” 

She got more cheerful then, and asked him 
to come and see her again before he went back 
to London, which he promised to do ; and then 
he rose to go away. 

“You must not fret about the empty box,” he 
said, “or I shall scold you next time I come. 
And, look here, Miss Toosey, you have never 
asked me to subscribe, though I have often 
teased you by pretending to put buttons and 
rubbish into the box.” 

“Will you, really?” she said. “I always 
fancied that you did not hold with missions, 
and thought them rather nonsense, though you 
were so kind to me about it; but if you would 
it would be a comfort to think the box was not 
quite empty.” 

108 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


He felt in his pocket, but his purse was not 
there. 6 ‘ Yon mnst give me credit, Miss Too- 
sey,” he said, smiling; “I shall consider it a 
debt. I promise to give— let me see— I mnst 
think how much I can afford. I promise to give 
something to yonr Mission. And now make 
haste to bed, and get well. ,, 

She was collecting her things together to go 
upstairs,— her spectacle-case, Bible, and one or 
two books ; and out of one of them a printed hit 
of paper slipped and fluttered to John Rossiter’s 
feet as he stood at the door. It was the prayer 
for missions cut out of the magazine. He 
picked it up. 

“And don’t fret yourself about the prayer, 
either , ’ 9 he said ; “let me have it, may I ? And 
suppose I say it for you? And don’t you think 
that ‘Thy kingdom come’ will do for your mis- 
sionary prayer till you are better?” 

And she smiled and nodded just like her old 
self as she went out. 

“She will soon be better,” John said to Betty, 
as he passed her in the passage ; but he did not 
guess how soon. 

109 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


‘ 4 Mother,’ ’ he said, next morning, coming 
into the breakfast-room with a large bunch of 
bloomy grapes in his hand, “will you make 
my peace with Rogers? I have cut the best 
bunch in his house, and I go in fear of my life 
from his vengeance.” 

“My dear John, how very inconsiderate you 
are ! He will be so vexed ! Why could not you 
have asked him for it?” 

‘ ‘ It was a sudden temptation that overtook me 
when I passed through ; and I am going to take 
them to Miss Toosey; and if there is anything 
else nice you can suggest for that poor little 
soul, I’ll take it along with them.” 

Mrs. Rossiter was kind-hearted and liberal, 
and she promised to send one of the maids into 
Martel that afternoon with some invalid 
dainties; but John insisted on taking the grapes 
himself, and marched off with them after break- 
fast, regardless of the expostulations of his 
mother and Humphrey, who had other views 
for passing the morning. 

As John Rossiter turned the corner into 
North Street he ran up against Mr. Ryder, and 


no 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


stopped to talk with him about the pheasant- 
shooting* in the Rentmore coverts. “I am just 
going to ask for Miss Toosey, ” he said, as they 
were parting. 

“Miss Toosey! Then you need not go any 
farther; she died last night.” 

“Died!” 

“Yes, poor old soul ! and it was only a wonder 
that she lived so long.” 

John Rossiter turned and went on without 
another word, leaving the doctor staring after 
him in surprise. He went on to the house me- 
chanically, and had knocked at the door before 
he recollected that there was no longer any 
object to his visit. Betty opened the door, with 
a red, swollen face, and burst out crying at sight 
of him, and threw her apron over her head in 
uncontrolled grief. 

‘ 1 All right, ’ ’ he said, ‘ ‘ I know ’ ’ ; and passed by 
her and went into the little parlor, and sat down 
in the same chair that he had sat in the night 
before, and again involuntarily lifted the mis- 
sionary-box in his hand. Presently Betty, hav- 
ing partly recovered herself, sidled into the 


hi 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


room, glad of company in the “nuked” quiet 
of the house. He asked no questions; and by 
and by she summoned courage to tell him how 
the quiet end came at midnight. “Miss Baker 
have been in this morning already, asking me 
no end of questions ; and she were quite put out 
with me because I hadn’t nothing to tell, and 
because Miss Toosey, poor dear! hadn’t said 
a lot of texes and fine things. She says, ‘Was 
it a triumphal death?’ says she. And I said as 
how I didn’t know what that might be ; and then 
she worrited to know- what was the very last 
words as ever Miss Toosey said, and I didn’t 
like for to tell her, but she would have it. 

“You see, sir, the old lady said her prayers 
just as usual ; and when I went in to see as she 
were all right on my way to bed, she says, ‘ I ’m 
pretty comfortable, Betty,’ says she; ‘good- 
night to you; and you’ve not forgotten to give 
Sammy his supper?’— as is the cat, sir. And 
them’s the last words she uttered; for when I 
come in half an hour after, hearing her cough, 
I see the change was a-coming. But Miss Baker 
she didn’t like it when I told her, though it were 


1 12 



George Re! fe r £3n it. 


Miss Toosey's Mission. 

“HE HELD THE MISSIONARY-BOX THOUGHTFULLY. 

113 



















































* 




























































































MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


her own fault for asking; and slie says, ‘So she 
didn’t testify to her faith,’ says she. And I 
didn’t know what she might mean, so I says, 
‘She were always good and kind to me and 
every one,’ says I; and so she were,” added 
Betty, touching unknowingly on a great truth; 
“and if that’s testifying to her faith, she’ve 
done it all her life.” 

And then she left him sitting there and musing 
on the quiet close of a quiet life, or rather the 
quiet passing into the fuller life; for what is 
death but ‘ ‘ an episode in life ’ ’ ? There was noth- 
ing grand or striking in Miss Toosey’s death— 
there very rarely is ; it is only now and then that 
there is a sunset glory over this life’s evening; 
generally those around see only the seed sown in 
weakness and dishonor ; generally when the glad 
summons comes, ‘ ‘ Friend, come up higher, ’ ’ the 
happy soul rises up eager to obey and leave 
“the lower places” without giving those left 
behind even a glance of the brightness of the 
wedding garment, or a word of the fullness of 
joy in the Bridegroom’s presence. 

And presently John Rossiter came away; 

8— Miss Toosey's Mission. 1 1 ^ 

A 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


and though he held the missionary-box thought- 
fully in his hand, he put nothing into it. Had 
he forgotten his promise to Miss Toosey, which 
he said he regarded as a debt, to give something 
to her Mission? 

“And so there is an end to poor Miss Toosey 
and her Mission ! ’ ’ said Mr. Peters, a few days 
later, as he met Mr. Glover returning from her 
funeral at the cemetery ; and Mr. Glover echoed 
the words with a superior, pitying smile : “So 
there is an end of poor Miss Toosey and her 
Mission ! ’ ’ 

Poor Miss Toosey! Why do people so often 
use that expression about the happy dead? 
Surely they might find a more appropriate one 
for those who have left the sordid poverty of 
life behind them and have entered into so rich 
an inheritance! Of course, they do not really 
mean that it was “an end of Miss Toosey,’ ’ for 
did they not say every Sunday, “I believe in 
the resurrection of the body and the life ever- 
lasting”? and how could they call that an end 
which was only the beginning of new life? 

116 


MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 


So this was only a figure of speech. But, per- 
haps, you will echo Mr. Glover’s sigh over the 
end of her Mission, and regret that such zeal 
and ardor should have been wasted and pro- 
duced no results. Wait a bit! There is no 
waste in nature, science teaches us; neither is 
there any in grace, says faith. We cannot al- 
ways see the results, but they are there as surely 
in grace as in nature. 

That same evening, John Rossiter wrote to 
the Bishop of Nawaub, and very humbly and 
diffidently offered himself, his young life, his 
health and his strength, his talents and energies 
his younger son’s portion, all that God had 
given him, for his Master’s use*, and the Bishop, 
who never ceased to pray “the Lord of the 
Harvest to send forth laborers into the har- 
vest,” “thanked God and took courage.” 


[the end] 


ii 7 



ALTEMUS’ GOOD TIMES SERIES 

Handsomely printed, profusely illustrated and attractively bound. 

Cloth, illuminated covers (5^x7^ Inches) 50 cents each. 

UNDER THE STARS 

By Florence Morse Kingsley 

Four beautiful stories from the life of Jesus. 

A Watch in the Night. The Only Son of His Mother. 

The Qhild in Jerusalem. The Children’s Bread. 

THE STORY OF THE ROBINS 

By Sarah Trimmer 

“The Story of the Robins” was first published in England under the 
title of Fabulous Histories,” in 1785, and acquired instant popularity. 
It has been issued in all sizes and styles ; it has received nothing but 
praise from the greatest or critics ; and it has been illustrated by the best 
artists. It compares favorably with modern works which teach kindness to 
animals. 


JACKANAPES 

By Juliana H. Ewing 

In the story of "jackanapes,” the Captain’s child, with his clear blue 
eyes and mop of yellow curls, is the one important figure. The doting 
aunt;, the faithful Tony, the irascible General, the postman, the boy- 
trumpeter, the silent Major, and the ever-dear Lollo, are there, it is true, 
but they group around the hero in subordinate positions. In all they say 
and do and feel they conspire to reflect the glory and beauty of the noble, 
generous, tender-spirited “jackanapes.” 


THE CHRISTMAS STOCKING 

By Elizabeth Wetherell 

This story of the Christmas Stocking has helped to make many children 
happy, for without it many fathers and mothers would have never thought 
of making arrangements for the visit of Santa Claus, who never comes 
where he is not maae welcome. The things little Carl found in his stocking 
told him stories which should help us into the habit of remembering those 
who have not all the good things we possess. 

LADDIE 

By the Author of “ Miss Toosey’s Mission ” 

A charming story that has been popular for many years, and deservedly so. 

MAKING A START 

By Tudor Jenks. 

A story of a bright boy who did not wait for "something to turn up,” 
but exercised his talent for drawing until he secured a good position on a 
great daily newspaper. A book for boys who are learning that "the secret 
of success is constancy to purpose.” 


HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA 


119 



ALTEMUS’ GOOD TIMES SERIES 

Handsomely printed, profusely illustrated and attractively bound. 

Cloth, illuminated covers ( 5/4 x inches) 50 cents each. 

THE STORY OF A DONKEY 

/ 

By Mme. La Comtesse de Segur. 

In this book the donkey tells the story of his life and adventure, be- 
cause, as he says, “i want you to treat all of us donkeys kindly, and to 
remember that we are often much more sensible than some human beings.” 
The story has always been exceedingly popular and has delighted thousands 
of readers. 

MISS TOOSEY’S MISSION 

By the Author of “ Laddie.” 

A delightful and wholesome story that has had a wide circulation and still 
holds its popularity. 

A BLUE GRASS BEAUTY 

By Gabrielle E. Jackson. 

Never did Kentucky turn out a handsomer creature than the Blue Grass 
Beauty who twice carried off the Blue Ribbon at New York’s great annual 
horse show. With the story of his life is woven that of some very nice 
people, and all is set forth in Mrs. Jackson’s inimitable manner. It is far too 
good a book to mislay. 


THE STORY OF A SHORT LIFE 

By Juliana H. Ewing. 

In “The Story of a Short Life,” Mrs. Ewing again sings the praises of 
military life and courtesies. Many people admire Leonard’s story as 
much as “Jackanapes,” possibly because the circumstances of the former’s 
life are much more within the range of common experiences than those of the 
latter. It is a simple, exquisitely tender little story. 

JESSICA’S FIRST PRAYER 

By Hesba Stretton. 

A beautiful and pathetic story which appeals to all children, and to older 
readers as well. 

THE ADVENTURES OF BARON 
MUNCHAUSEN 

By Rudolph Erich Raspe. 

In 1737 Baron Munchausen served in Russian campaigns against the 
Turks, and after his return acquired great notoriety by his exaggerated 
stories of adventure. These stories are so outrageous, and Munchausen 
asserts so strongly that they are all strictly true, that his name has become 
proverbial as a synonym for extravagant boasting. 


HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA 




120 



GEORGE WASHINGTON JONES 

A Christmas Gift that went-a-begging. 

By Ruth McEnery Stuart, 

Author of “ Napoleon Jackson,” etc. 

George Washington Jones, “ ten years old, little, black, sensitive,” tries to 
give himself away to some lovely young lady who would make him her page, 
as in the days “befo’the wah.” Even without the magic of the author’s 
name in the writing world, the story will survive as one of the best and 
prettiest ever written. 

Cloth, ornamental, illustrated - - - - $1.00 


LITTLE MISS JOY-SING 

How she became the Beautiful Pine Tree in the Garden 
of Prince of Don’t Care What. 

By John Luther Long. 

PICTURES BY ZAIDA BEN-YUSUF. 

Little Miss Joy-Sing, with a poppy behind her ear, is a child of the sunshine. 
She slept and she woke and she wished ; and there is a beautiful prince, and 
a fox that can ta’k — but the book is too clever to be cut up in pieces for 
inspection. Mr. Long stands inside the circle of the mighty and always 
has large audiences. 

Cloth, ornamental $0.75 


HALF-A-DOZEN HOUSEKEEPERS 

A Story for Girls in half-a-dozen chapters. 

By Kate Douglas Wiggin. 

PICTURES BY MILLS THOMPSON. 

The charm of fhis book is the insight the author gives us into the natural life 
of natural people. Every girl who reads it will put the volume in her collec- 
tion of permanent acquisitions. It is deliciously fresh and amusing. 

Cloth, ornamental - - - - - - $0.75 


THE STORY OF THE GOLDEN 

FLEECE 

By Andrew Lang. 

PICTURES BY MILLS THOMPSON. 

It happened long ago, this adventure of the Golden Fleece, but the fame 
of the heroes who sailed away to a distant lard to win themselves renown 
forever has lived, having been told many times in story and song. Yet 
who could tell it like Mr. Lang, with his poet’s passion for beauty, his 
artist’s eye for color and detail ? 

Cloth, ornamental $0.75 


HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA 

■ ■■■■■ — 


12 1 



GALOPOFF, THE TALKING PONY 

By TUDOR JENK3, 

Author of ‘‘Imaginations,” “ The Century World’s Fair Book,” “ The Boys’ Book of Ex- 
ploration,” etc., etc. Pictures by Howard R. Cort. 

A story for young folks, told in the captivating style that has made 
Mr. Jeuks’ name a household word wherever there are English-speak- 
ing boys and girls. The book is delightful reading; as enjoyable as 
“ Black Beauty,” or “Alice in Wonderland.” 

12mo, cloth, ^ $1.00 


CAPS AND CAPERS 

By GABRIELLE E. JACKSON, 

Author of “ Pretty Polly Perkins,” “ Denise and Ned Toodles,” “ By Love’s Sweet Rule,” 

etc., etc. Pictures by C. M. Relyea. 

A story of boarding-school life, far above the average of such stories. 
Toinette Reeve, who has scarcely known the influence of a happy 
home or tender mother's love, is taken from a school where the posses- 
sion of money atones for shortcomings in character, and is placed with 
sensible, loving instructors who are not one whit behind their charges 
in the spirit of good fellowship. 

12mo, cloth, $1.00 


THE LITTLE LADY— HER BOOK 

By ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE, 

Author of “ The Hollow Tree,” " The Deep Woods,” “ The Arkansaw Bear," etc., etc. 
Pictures by Mabel L. Humphrey , Louise L. Heustis and others. 

The Little Lady, who lives with the Big Man and the Little Woman 
in the House of Many Windows, is a dainty little girl to whom the Big 
Man tells stories and sings songs; just such stories and songs as chil- 
dren love. Then there are walks and excursions and many adventures, 
which the Little Woman shares with them. 

12mo, cloth, $1.00 


TOMMY FOSTER’S ADVENTURES 

By FRBD A. OBER, 

Author of " The Silver City,” ” Montezuma' s Gold Mines,” “ Crusoe's Island,” “ The 
Knockabout Club Books,” etc., etc. Pictures by Stanley M. Arthur. 

It is worth while for boys to read such a book as this, and girls, too, 
for that matter. Tommy is a sturdy American boy who has a glorious 
time in the Southwest among the Navajo, Zuni, Moqui and Pueblo 
Indians. Boylike, he gets into a “scrape,” but a young Indian becomes 
his friend and later shares his adventures. The author has lived 
among the scenes he describes ; and there is plenty of fun and incident. 

12mo, cloth, 240 pages $1.00 

FOLEY IN FAIRYLAND 

By CAROLYN WELLS, 

Author of “ Story of Betty,” “ Idle Idyls,” “ The Merry Go Round,” “At the Sign of the 
Sphinx," etc., etc. Handsomely Illustrated. 

A remarkable book for boys and girls, fully as fascinating as the 
other justly popular, books of this author. 

12mo, cloth, $1.00 


Henry Altemus Company, Philadelphia 


122 



OCT 


190 










